Gone yodelin'

We're heading to Zurich for a road trip through the Swiss and French Alps, with a week on Lake Geneva. I can't wait to flash those four free airline tickets at the Continental counter. If you missed the post that explains how I pulled that off, read it here.

I won't be blogging while I'm away -- all-day note taking and nightly journaling eat a lot of time as it is, so I'm not going to worry about lugging a laptop, darting into Internet cafes or manipulating my husband's BlackBerry to post while I'm on vacation. I've put away messages on my phone and computer.

The only technology I'm bringing is my iPod, which will help me get through the 15-mile training run I have to do next week. The scenery will help, too. Out and back along the shore of Lake Geneva. We're renting an apartment a block from the water in Thonon-les-Bains, France. I'll have to remember to turn right when I leave the apartment for that run. If I turn left, I'll hit Switzerland. I'll be carrying Gatorade, but no passport.

Here are links to some archived stories. Read one a day while I'm gone, and you won't even miss me:

Eau de Caernarfon (with apologies to Prince Charles)
Pope in a snowdome
Taj Mahal: The tomb that swallowed my husband
Argentina: A gaucho's gift
Moneglia: Apricot sunshine
So where's the eclipse, Einstein?
Norway: Roads less traveled
Cruisin' with the Russian navy

Enjoy the stories. See you in early August.


www.LoriHein.com

Nashville cats

My dear friend Rhonda came for dinner yesterday. She and her family drove to Boston from their home outside Nashville to pick up their daughter Erin, who's spent the past six weeks interning at the Massachusetts State House. Erin's aunt is a state rep, and Erin spent most of this summer scoping out the inner workings of life under the big golden dome that crowns Beacon Hill.

The kids and I visited Rhonda and her family in Tennessee a few summers ago. Rhonda's house was a key stop on our 2002 cross-country trek:


The road from Kentucky led to my friend Rhonda’s house, outside Nashville. We’ve known each other since we were 14, when I was in love with her cousin Rick. After he broke my heart, we stayed friends. Rhonda was the only person I’d made plans to visit.

Like many of their neighbors, Rhonda and husband Charlie came to Nashville to follow work. While on a 6 a.m. power walk through her development, once a vast farm, I watched people transplanted from Michigan and the northeast drive off to jobs at Dell Computer or the car plants at Spring Hill and Smyrna. As I circumnavigated the tidy neighborhood, I noticed what looked like “For Sale” signs planted on some of the front lawns. When I got close enough to read them, I learned that “The 10 Commandments Are Supported Here” and “Ye Must Be Born Again.”

Rhonda and Charlie have adapted to their new culture. They’ll always be Yankees, but their kids were born in the South. Erin and Paul go to Christian school, and their summer reading list included the Bible.

Our kids played together in the cul-de-sac, while Rhonda, Charlie and I drank beers on the front porch. Charlie’s a traveler. Real travelers know geography, even of places they haven’t been to yet. I described our route, and Charlie sat back and smiled, visualizing the Stonehenge of old Cadillacs sticking up in Amarillo, the jagged reaches of the Sawtooth, the forested shores of Lake Huron. This is a guy who, years ago, got in a car with a few buddies and drove from Boston to Yellowknife, just to see what a place called Yellowknife looked like. They spent a few hours there and drove home. I understood completely.

Rhonda’s house had been a psychological safety net. It was a familiar destination. A place where we’d been expected. Somewhere with people who cared about us. A chance to stretch out and hang around a house with a yard and lots of rooms and a washing machine and a kitchen with food. A visit with friends. A point from which I could turn around and go home if something wasn’t right about this trip and still feel the venture had been worthwhile.

We left Rhonda’s driveway and left the safety net behind. We were on our own, for the next 10,000 miles. We drove into America, and it embraced us.


From Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America (2004).

Happy Birthday, Dalai Lama

I wasn't planning to post today. I just finished an article on deadline and was looking forward to a day or two of writing absolutely nothing. And, OLN's Tour de France broadcast starts in 25 minutes.

But I just heard on the radio that today is the Dalai Lama's 71st birthday, and I couldn't let the day pass without wishing one of the planet's kindest souls and gentlest peacemakers a happy birthday.

Wherever we went in Lhasa and across Tibet, people would whisper, "Dalai Lama pic?" hoping we westerners had tucked a forbidden photo or two of His Holiness in our backpacks. We, the tourists, hadn't. We'd been ardently advised not to in the travel documents provided by our tour company. Attempt to enter China with photos or writings about or by the Dalai Lama and prepare to potentially spend a whole bunch of time in a cold cell was the message.

So we left our Dalai Lama pics at home. But our tour guide hadn't.

He stunned us when, at a monastery outside Lhasa, after a gaunt monk in a crimson robe peered around a painted pillar and uttered a hushed but hopeful "Dalai Lama pic?", he produced one and handed it to the monk. I shot a photo (which I'd inserted in this post then deleted, knowing this blog is read in China) of the guide giving the glorious contraband to the monk, and I held my breath from that moment until we crossed the Nepalese border two weeks later, knowing that if, for some reason, my film were seized and developed, the guide and I might go to jail. And the monk might die.

When we got to Kathmandu, I bought a bright red t-shirt with an embroidered Tibetan flag on its front, under the words, "FREE TIBET." We'd been in Kathmandu two days when I picked up a newspaper and read that, the very day we'd crossed the Tibetan-Nepalese border, two 20-something Americans had been arrested in Lhasa's Barkhor Square and imprisoned.

Their crime? Wearing "FREE TIBET" t-shirts.

www.LoriHein.com

Wildebeest migration: A view to a kill

The wildebeest are on the move.

Each spring, tens of thousands of wildebeest move north from Tanzania's Serengeti plain and head for the sweet, plentiful grass of the Masai Mara in Kenya. The endearingly ugly, bearded gnu will graze in the Mara until November, then return south to the Serengeti.

In July, the Mara is a sea of wildebeest. The Jeeps and Rovers and kombi vans that take camera-toting tourists out on dawn and evening game drives phase the gnu not at all. They chomp and stare and nuzzle and sashay while tourist vehicles ply thin dirt tracks that cut right through herds that can number in the hundreds. The annual migration is a visual feast for tourists. And a literal feast for lions.

During the blazing midday hours, lions sleep in the grass behind rocks and boulders and in the shade of the wispy acacia trees that dot the savannah. Tourists sleep, read, swim or gather at the bar at their fenced camps and lodges, passing the hot hours until the evening game drive. While lions and tourists rest, wildebeest graze unmolested.

About 4 p.m., safari vehicles roll out of the gates and bump across rutted tracks in search of game. Lions stir. Wildebeest become wary.

Near the end of our second evening drive on the Mara, our Star Travel and Tours guide, Herbert, a master at finding wildlife and delivering us into scenes of such utter animal majesty that we often could not speak, motioned for us to be still and, about 10 yards from a collection of tall gray stones half-hidden by thick shafts of golden grass, cut the engine of our white pop-top van and pointed toward the rocks, on our left. A herd of some 50 wildebeest, many babies, stood stock still on our right. The distance between rocks and gnu was less than a hundred feet. We’d been with Herbert for a few days and knew we were going to see something special.

It was 6:15. Our lodge imposed a 6:30 p.m. deadline on vehicle drivers. All vehicles carrying tourists were to be inside the lodge gates by 6:30. Searches would be mounted for any vans not accounted for by that deadline, and the drivers would be reprimanded (unless they’d been eaten). Herbert had a habit of cutting things close, but every risk he took was, we’d learned, wisely calculated, and we trusted him.

The wildebeest stared and seemed unsettled. Mothers stood near their young. Some in the herd had begun galloping lightly on the spindly legs that didn’t seem to match their meaty bodies. They bounced and bounded, then reversed direction in quick, snapping turns. Then they’d stop and stare, beards brushing the tops of the tallest grass.

The grass near the rocks began to move, and, with Herbert’s finger to guide us, we made out a pride of seven lions silently slinking closer to the road we sat on – and to the wildebeest, who were clearly on guard. The lions’ stealth was at once frightening and awesome. They moved as a strategically trained unit under the direction of a young, maneless simba. He moved his pride of mature females and fit cubs through the grass, inch by inch.

6:20, 6:25. The lodge gates, miles away, were about to close, and the rest of the tourists were already tossing back Tuskers at the lodge bar. We had to go. The lion pack was at the road, a few feet from our van. Herbert started the key in the ignition, and we looked at the wildebeest, wondering which of them would go down tonight.

At 6:30 the next morning, we met Herbert and left for a dawn game drive. Spellbinding is too weak a word to describe the early morning Mara.

While the evening drive shows you the hunt – meat-eaters planning canny, quiet takedowns of plant-eaters – the dawn drive shows you the hunters’ handiwork and the manic collection of carrion eaters who feast on remains the hunters couldn’t finish. Evening is for predators, dawn for scavengers.

Two lionesses and three cubs, bellies bulging with wildebeest, crossed the road in front of our van, languidly making their way back to their resting place on a low, rocky hillock. They’d sleep until evening.

Herbert parked the van, and we watched four wild-eyed hyenas, snouts flaring, dash through the brush to rip chunks of flesh or a spindly leg from a nearly-stripped wildebeest. They tore their prizes off quickly, and emitted sick-sounding yelps as they slunk off to chew before darting back to the kill. The hyenas were covered in blood. Hyenas do kill, in packs. But wildebeest season affords them the lazy option of letting lions do the work. Lions take the lions’ share, but then the hyenas eat leftovers for free. Hyenas may be ugly, but they're not stupid. Why break a sweat if you don’t have to?

Jackals nipped at the wildebeest flesh, and whenever one scored a piece, one or more hyena would reign terror on the jackal, chasing him through the savannah until he dropped the meat. Between hyena raids, swarming vultures picnicked on the gnu’s head and neck. Lustily. They approached the remains with ugly, hopping gaits and spread their wings as if to keep outsiders from their meal. They made a smacking, sucking noise as they descended upon the bloody, bodyless head.

When the wildebeest had been stripped, save for the hair on his face and forehead, the hyenas gathered for dessert. We watched as they raised ribs and femurs to their loud lips and listened to the sound of teeth crunching bone.

I looked up from the scene and watched a hot air balloon, brilliant stripes against the purplish-blue rising of the sun, ferry well-heeled tourists, at $350 a head, high over the Mara on a dawn champagne flight.

I pitied them for what they were missing.


www.LoriHein.com